CHURCH AND CHEER OR SPIRIT AND SPORTS. (London: Arthur Stockwell.) Crown 8vo. 6d.
This booklet is written with the good intention of showing the danger and wickedness of the present abandonment to sport and pastime. Although the author’s perception of the causes and remedies of this vice of the twentieth century may be somewhat lacking in depth, yet he speaks many things very much to the purpose. He begins by affirming the claims of the Bible as a revelation of the Divine will, and of the Church as a Divine institution. It is well known that the present-day devotion to sport has made havoc of that public regard to the word and ordinances of God that formerly prevailed. The author grants that the desire for recreation is an innocent, beneficent feature of man’s nature as originally created. In this he agrees with our Larger Catechism, which expounds the Sixth Commandment as requiring a “moderate use of meat, sleep, and recreation.” He very truly asserts, however, that the present excesses of excitement on the
football field and elsewhere are more destructive to mind and body than a long course of overwork would be. Of sports which are essentially immoral and bad the author gives a fairly complete catalogue, noting in particular horse-racing, and launching a merited shaft of condemnation at the conduct of Lord Rosebery, who was wont to combine the opposing functions of devotee of the turf and Prime Minister of Great Britain. One colossal instance of wholesale abandonment to sport the author notes is the case of the 120,000 people who on a Saturday afternoon in April, 1901, flocked through the turnstiles of the Crystal Palace, London, to witness a football match. He justly stigmatises this as a monstrous spectacle, dangerous to health and a waste of time and money. The poor victims of last year’s football orgie in Glasgow truly found that their misspent Saturday afternoon was dangerous to health, as many of them will go limping and mutilated to their graves as a consequence of their presence at that scene of folly and sin. Misspent Saturdays followed by wasted Sabbaths, constitute a record that will fearfully aggravate the terror of the Judgment Seat. A Saturday of swearing, drinking, and gambling is as violent a contrast as can well be conceived to the condition of soul called for in the admonition, “To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” The writer, proceeding to suggest remedies for the sporting mania, tarries amid human expedients which have some temporary and superficial value, such as parks, halls, picture galleries. He also desiderates that the pulpit should witness in a clear and unmistakable manner against what is really wrong. He does not, however, give any fit or honourable place to the regenerative agency of the Holy Ghost, nor entertain any recollections of the glory of His goings in this and other lands in the days of old, when ancient, world-wide, deeply-rooted forms of evil were brought to an everlasting end, and when moral wastes of idolatry, folly, and wickedness were made into gardens of the Lord. Moral reformers and philanthropists do themselves a very ill turn when they omit views and recollections of this character.